--- TIC-TECH message:
On Thursday, January 25 at Ballard HS from about 8am-8:45am I tested
using a stopwatch loaned to me by the PE Department the speed of answering
emails on OWA. I used a Pentium GAteway 2000 133mhz machine with 32 megs
of RAM networked running Windows NT 4.0.
Here are the results: (all times are given in seconds)
Launch Internet Explorer 29.16"
Open 1st webmail screen 5.2"
Login w SSL encryption 9.53"
Open to Inbox 9.76"
Open email (1st new email) 11.97"
Close email window 1.23"
open email window 3.41"
Close email window 1.50"
open email window 3.06"
delete email 1.5"
open email 2.88"
close email 1.73"
open email 3.24"
close email 1.47"
open email 9.34"
open reply window 6.10"
open email 7.65"
open a list of names of staff
emails as attachment 23.69"
close attachment 2.5"
move an email to folder 5"
open reply window 5"
Analysis of Performance
Generally I would say this was by far the most efficient use of time with
OWA that I have ever experienced. Previous sessions were on a Pentium 90
instead of a 133. Had all my experiences with OWA been as efficient I
would not have called its lackluster performance in question nor would my
girlfriend's feeling have been hurt. I solved the personal problem with
roses. Did faster hardware solve the performance question? I do not
know.
For example during this session finals were taking place and it is most
likely that very few others were using the system. This could have
accounted for the performance jump in and of itself.
When it comes to opening the attachment, that is clearly a hardware
issue (I think) and 23.69" is bit much time to wait for a small attachment
to open. Remember how everyone touts the ability of OWA to easily handle
attachments, but they occur in less than 2% of my email and I can think of
better things to do with my time than wait for these to open up. So the
advance in technology is of no value (my opinion) without the end user
capability to view it on a reasonably fast machine.
Another issue may be that only 32 megs of RAM slows the machine in some
respects. Would bumping them up to 64 solve the problem? It would cost
about $70 per machine at Ballard and assuming we have only 100 of these
donor machines it would cost us $7000 to upgrade.
Well these are some of the issues. Another issue is safety and it is here
that OWA shines. It protects us from assimilation by the BORG. Were
they to pass by and scan our technology I think they would pass us by as
not worthy of assimilation.
If the times of today are representative then I think OWA is a reasonable
tool, but if the previous times I have observed are usual then I feel we
are being asked to use a time waster for the sake of saying we use
technology.
I welcome your comments.
Still written by telnet, sent by telnet (without attachments)<G>
Barry Craig <bcraig@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 25 2001 - 11:00:05 PST